Australia's Telstra picks Cisco's carrier routing system

November 16, 2005 Sydney, Australia -- Cisco Systems announced that it has been selected by Telestra, Australia's principal telecommunications provider, as the preferred vendor to upgrade the carrier's Internet Protocol (IP) core router network, in order to provide an increased range of IP services.

Telstra will deploy the Cisco carrier routing system (CRS-1) at the core of its next-generation network, to support a full range of services to all sectors of the Australian market place, including supporting IP Core transit for Ethernet services for business customers and next-generation "triple play" (data, video, voice) over broadband services. The CRS-1 platform, including the carrier-class Cisco IOS XR software, will be deployed by Telstra at all core points of presence across Australia, interconnected by wide-area network links.

According to a press release, Telstra's engineering team designed the implementation of the network transformation project with Cisco to meet the carrier's technical and business requirements, focusing on customer satisfaction and the launch of triple-play services in 2006. The new core network is designed to deliver increased capacity, performance, predictability, and continuous operation to allow the carrier to rapidly bring to market a range of IP-based multimedia services for residential and business customers, such as advanced audio and video telephony services, home entertainment services, and high-priority data services. The carrier says the CRS-1 platform will also allow it to reduce operational expenditures throughout its core network by collapsing disparate, standalone networks into a common, single core.

"Telstra and Cisco have worked closely for many years, and Cisco is delighted to be expanding the business relationship to help Telstra reduce costs and provide its customers with world class IP networking services, based on the Cisco CRS-1," comments Ross Fowler, managing director of Cisco's Australia and New Zealand operations. "The built-in capacity of the CRS-1 will help enable Telstra to support the strong growth of broadband enabled services for years to come, and help Australia become a leading player in the 21st century productivity race."

Cisco says its CRS-1 platform is a new class of routing system designed to deliver continuous system operation, service flexibility, and extended system longevity to telecommunications service providers and research organizations. Cisco says the platform provides Telstra with multi-terabit capacity, as well as continuous operation and scalability to underpin investment protection for next-generation services.